Mumbai, May 19: Sanjay Leela Bhansali was jubilant but exhausted. "The awards season is finally over and it's now time to get back to work".
After sweeping the IIFA awards in Johannesburg Saturday night, Bhansali's Devdas holds the record for the maximum number of popular awards ever won by an Indian film. Because of its impeccable literary antecedents, it is also expected to win some major National awards later during the year.
Devdas swept seven of the 13 IIFA awards, including best picture and best director.
Speaking from Johannesburg after the function Bhansali said, "I'm especially glad for Kiron Kher, who lost out every popular award in India. As she rightly said on stage Der aaye duroost aaye (It came late but it's good it came)'".

Kher had flown in to Johannesburg from New York where she had earlier gone for the Bollywood Awards with her son Sikandar, who's being groomed for stardom.

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Earlier during the week Amitabh Bachchan with wife Jaya and son Abhishek had flown into Mumbai on Tuesday morning, gone straight to a shooting and flown to Johannesburg.

"It's been an exhausting schedule. But the effort was worth it. This year's IFFA awards were wonderful," he exulted.

The Big B wasn't the only star who made a special effort to be present in Johannesburg. Akshay Kumar, who danced to a strange medley of Kareena Kapoor, Raveena Tandon and his own songs, was in Montreal with wife Twinkle Khanna shooting for Dharamesh Darshan's Bewafaa. He took time off to fly to Johannesberg and was flying back Sunday to join Kareena Kapoor and Sushmita Sen in Montreal.

Speaking of Kareena, the organisers and actor Salman Khan were very keen she performed at the IIFA awards function. Kareena declined because she found the remuneration to be too low. Her colleagues Rani Mukherjee and Shilpa Shetty had no qualms about dancing at the awards.


For Shetty, it was touch-and-go at the IIFA awards. After performing the vamps' songs at Johannesburg she zipped off to dance to the songs from the 1990s at Cannes.

Anil Kapoor, who compered the show, was doing so for the first time. "I was nervous as hell. But once I got on stage it was all right."
But the star of the evening was expectedly Amitabh Bachchan. Whether delivering the welcome address or striding up to the stage to join honorary-award winner Anandji, the Big B brought the house down.


The premiere of Honey Irani's Armaan was also a disappointment. News had already reached Johannesburg that the film was bit of a damp squib.